Emilie in Seattle 2011 - Sleepless in Seattle

Song/title of the blog: Gregory Alan Isakov - "Words"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFw7AaBxatA

During this stay in Seattle I have enjoyed EVERY single day. It is almost over, and I’m also looking forward to come home again. I haven’t updated you for a looooong time, so here is a whole bunch of words, telling you what I've been doing for the past weeks.

Anne Sofie's birthday at Red Robin

The 3^rd October, we went out to celebrate Anne Sofie’s birthday. First we went to the mall (my first time there) and afterwards we went out for dinner at the local Red Robin burger restaurant. Her host family got her birthday balloons, and we had a nice day!

Lunch with the girls

A couple of days after, me and 6 of the girls went out for lunch and shopping at a store called Ross. It’s kinda like an outlet shop, but we mostly went there for fun, and we tried out a lot of fun clothing, among other things, ugly prom dresses. It was a nice day, and we spend a lot of hours in each other’s company.

In Seattle (notice the nice weather!)

The 8^th of October, we went on a class trip to Seattle. We were supposed to meet at the school at 10 am, and heading in a bus for Seattle downtown. It was kind of rainy in Edmonds, at a lot of us wasn’t really in the mood for a long time outside in the rain, I think.

Riding the Ducks

All that changed when we got to Seattle downtown! Suddenly the sun was shining and the weather was actually mild. The first thing we were gonna do was go and visit the Space Needle. The view was beautiful, and a lot of pictures were taken! Afterwards we had lunch at an old school burger restaurant called Quincy’s. It was nice and the food was good. Then, we were going to ride the ducks! The duck is a mix between a bus and a boat, so it could both drive in the streets and go in the harbour. It was the most amazing thing!! As I said, the sun was shining, the bus driver was SO nice and funny, and we saw all of downtown while he told stories about Seattle and we were listening to good music! And then we went in the harbour. We sailed around for a while, and it was BEAUTIFUL!

Space Needle with view

After the trip, we were all so excited about the experience we got. And then we drove to the Pike Place Market, a BIG, old market by the waterfront, which had all kinds of fruit, veggies, fish, tea and everything else. We were all tired and there was very crowded. However, it was nice to see and I had a great time.
After that we went back to the school and home to our host families again.

The tattoos

The following Thursday we went back to Seattle because we got off from school very early. Me and my childhood friend Oliver were going to a place called Supergenius Tatto to get a tattoo. He got a X on his back, and I got a Y on my arm. We were very excited, and it was I crazy experience. Today, we’re still very happy about the tattoos we got that day! After the tattoo experience we went shopping, and late in the night we took a bus back to Edmonds.

Vancouvers skyline

Sunday the 16^th October at 7 am, me, Morten and Mathias Kure went to Vancouver in Canada. It was Mathias’ hostmom who took us there, because she was going to meet some of her friends there.

We were dropped off in the northern Vancouver. We just enjoyed the beautiful view at the waterfront, from where you could see Vancouver’s skyline. After lunch, we took a Seabus to Vancouver downtown. We talked a lot about how Vancouver looks kinda like a mix of New York(or any other city in America) and some old European city, like Paris or London.
From the seabusstop we went to Gastown. Gastown is a rebuild old city, which was incerinated by hockeyfans last year. We walked through an old market, but it was mostly poor people trying to sell old shit or stolen things.

These two pictures are from
the weird market

Chinatown gate

As the market ended we turned right and after about 30 seconds we were kind of choked. The street was filled with poor people, and it smelled very bad of alcohol and drugs. There were a big sign saying “DRUGS” with capital letters. I took a picture of it, but was immediately grabbed in my arm by a very tall and big, black guy. He told us that we should pack away our cameras, ‘cause the people on the sinister-looking street wouldn’t be happy if they saw it! So we did, but we kept walking. The people on this street were weird. I consume that all of them was either intoxicated by drugs or alcohol, or had a mental disease, or all of those 3. They were dressed in rags, singing, and talking with themselves. Some of them were talking to us, but we ignored them and walked by. There was sold A LOT of drugs in the street too, and they didn’t try to hide it at all. They were making joints in the middle of the street, and waving with huge, see-through plastic bags filled with marijuana. As we kept walking, we passed a kind of church. It was really just 2 shop windows with a big cross on one of them and a door between. In the other window we saw about 50 papers of missing kids in the ages of probably 3-20 years old. This freaked us out, and we went through the street as fast as we could and crossed the big road.
When we were “in safety” on the other side of the street we saw a police car passing through the scary street, driving about 10 miles per hour. We obviously expected the police car to arrest the people with the drugs, but the cops just nod friendly to the men in the street, as if they knew them and it was totally okay.
After that weird experience we set out to find China Town, which is supposed to be the biggest China Town outside China. We went around, looking for it, but we didn’t really find it. The closest we came to “China” was a big gate saying “China Town”. Around, all the street names were in Chinese letters, and the shops were Chinese, but it wasn’t really something, so we left again.

Mathias looking at the beautiful view in Vancouver

After we walked through a couple of different streets, we went to the waterfront. Here, we had a view over the mountains, and we saw some street art too and visited a lot of antique shops.
A couple of hours later we went back to Edmonds, and arrived at about 11 PM after some problems by the border. All in all, Vancouver was a beautiful city, and I enjoyed the trip and the company of the boys.

The rest of my trip will be posted one of the following days, because right now it’s Thanksgiving! Everybody is looking forward to the big dinner, spending time with family, and so on. And tomorrow, me and the whole class is going to Portland, Oregon for Black Friday.